Narcissa Whitman

The bluffs behind the sign took their Mormon name on May 22, 1847, when Willard Richards called them the Ancient Ruins Bluffs for their look of a fallen city; the National Park Service says English converts in the company saw the towers and castles of home in them. Orson Pratt climbed several, and William Clayton went up alone and wrote "Wm. Clayton, May 22, 1847" on a smooth rock in red chalk. The next morning, a Sunday, leaders climbed the highest, Pratt measured it at 235 feet above the river, and they left their names on a buffalo skull.

What the plaque says

Narcissa Whitman Narcissa Whitman, trail-blazer and martyred missionary, is one of the great heroines of the frontier West. In 1836 she and Eliza Spalding, following the north side of the Platte on horseback, became the first white women to cross the American continent. The Protestant "Oregon Mission" was composed of Dr. Marcus Whitman, Rev. Henry Spalding, their new brides, and William Gray. They traveled from New York to Otoe Indian Agency (Bellevue, Nebraska), then joined an American Fur Company caravan led by Thomas Fitzpatrick. From the Green River rendezvous they journeyed westward with traders of the Hudson's Bay Company. In November 1847, Narcissa, her husband, and eleven others, were massacred by Cayuse Indians at their Walla Walla mission, now a National Historic Site. The missionaries passed this point in June 1836. In May 1847, the Mormon Pioneers passed here en route from Winter Quarters (present North Omaha) to Salt Lake Valley, calling these formations "Ancient Bluff Ruins." Beginning with the California Gold Rush in 1849 this "Mormon Pioneer Trail" became "the Council Bluffs Road" to emigrants bound for the West Coast. Oregon-California Trails Association Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Courthouse and Jail Rocks — 19 mi
  Two clay and sandstone buttes south of Bridgeport that emigrants called a castle, a capitol, a church and coffins before the courthouse and jail names stuck, with a path to their base.

More markers nearby

• Mud Springs — 14 mi
• Amanda Lamme — 15 mi
• Courthouse and Jail Rocks — 19 mi
• Bridgeport, Nebraska "Trail City, USA" — 21 mi